“For spring prep. Kelsey called this morning. Dock boards, trail washouts, two new kayak racks, and apparently someone promised to run a summer reading adventure for the cabin kids.”
“Someone sounds ambitious.”
“Someone makes people believe they can do things.”
My throat tightens. He said that to me once in his cabin, after cheese and crackers and a map spread across his bed, when I admitted I was terrified of wanting a life that did not come with a district calendar. He said I made people believe they could. Back then, I thought he meant children. Now I know he meant me too.
“I’ll need supplies,” I say.
“You have supplies.”
“I need more.”
“You always need more.”
“Children require options.”
“Children require fewer glitter pens.”
I gasp. “Take that back.”
“No.”
“This relationship is in serious danger.”
His mouth curves. “Is it?”
“Maybe.”
He tightens his arms around me. “Then I’ll hydrate.”
I laugh, and he kisses me. He kisses me in the middle of the day, in front of the marina, with children nearby and pelicans judging us from a post. He kisses me like he is not ashamed of wanting me. Like he never has been.
When he pulls back, I rest my forehead against his chest.
“I love you,” I say.
The words are not new. We have said them before. First in whispers, then in the dark, then once very loudly after Hudson claimed a Christmas-light display at a campground was “festive enough” and I had to defend joy on behalf of humanity. But each time still feels like a small leap.
His hand slides into my hair. “I love you too, Layla.”
No flinch. No hesitation. No sense that love is a cage closing around either of us.
A road waits beyond the marina. A season waits beyond this one. North in spring. Mountains in summer. Maybe the Gulf again next winter. Maybe somewhere new if the work shifts, or the wind changes, or life opens another door.
Hudson takes my hand as we walk toward the truck. My sandals dangle from my other fingers. The pavement is warm under my bare feet, and my toes are dusty, stubborn, useful little things carrying me forward.
He opens the truck door for me, but does not help me in until I reach for him. Same as always. Choice first. Hands second.
I climb in, and he waits while I settle my bag, my water bottle, and the folder of pirate research station papers at my feet. Then he leans one arm on the open door.
“Ready?” he asks.
I look past him to the marina, the kids, the water, the wide blue sky. Then I look at the man who waited below the cliff, in the storm, beneath the porch light, and beside every version of me I was afraid to become.
I smile.
“No.”
His mouth curves, slow and knowing.
“But I’m coming anyway.”
He laughs, and there it is. The sound of home, not as a place, but as a person willing to travel beside me while I become more myself. Hudson closes my door, walks around the front of the truck, and climbs in beside me. The engine starts. The road opens ahead. And this time, I do not feel like I am leaving a life behind. I feel like I am carrying it with me.
